The best career advice Singaporean parents have for their children is…

Parents are often our first mentors, but they might not be keen to help us out as much as we thought.

A new report from LinkedIn has revealed 53% of parents in Singapore are not sharing valuable professional knowledge that could help their children’s careers.

The research – which was released in the lead up to LinkedIn’s Bring Your Parents to Work Day on November 6 – found the best piece of advice parents have for their children is to learn how to manage time (46%). However, few young employees will ever get this advice from their parents, thanks to a few beliefs which put them off sharing their wisdom.

The report found the top three reasons career advice is not shared from parent to child are:

They feel their children have not needed their advice (38%)

The working world has changed and their advice is no longer valid (34%)

They don’t know enough about their child’s career to offer advice (28%)

The findings are slightly worrying as 59% of employees believe they could benefit professionally from their parents’ knowledge and skills.

“Our parents have accumulated vast experience and knowledge over the course of their work lives, and there are many lessons we can learn from them,” Hari Krishnan, managing director for Asia Pacific and Japan at LinkedIn, said.

“In particular, soft skills like time management and managing professional relationships are transferable across industries and time, and are just as important as job-specific ones. Parents shouldn’t let concerns about not understanding today’s working world or their children’s jobs hold them back.”

Other than time management, parents who did want to share career advice said they would likely help out with interpersonal skills (43%), problem solving (41%) and integrity, and perseverance (both at 39%).